Violinist Julian Kainrath and pianist Josu de Solaun

Two ICMA winners, violinist Julian Kainrath and pianist Josu de Solaun joined for a recording of the three Violin Sonatas by Edward Grieg. The recording took place in the Auditorio Manuel de Falla in Granada which is also the home base of the label IBS Classical, with Francisco Moya as Sound Engineer for IBS Classical.

Josu de Solaun says: « Working with Julian has been very natural in a practical musical sense. We are very good friends, and also know each other’s families well, and that familiarity simply means that in the studio there is very little need to build anything verbally. Things tend to fall into place quickly, that is, a shared sense of pulse, a similar instinct for when to lean into a phrase or let it breathe, and an almost physical awareness of balance in the room. It feels less like negotiating interpretation and more like listening into the same space from slightly different angles. »

The pianist adds: « More generally, chamber music is for us something very physical and time-bound: it lives in breath, in the weight of a bow change, in the friction between two lines that are not identical but still feel inevitably connected. It is a form of attention that is constantly being recalibrated in real time, where even silence has direction and texture.

Grieg’s three violin sonatas are especially fascinating in that regard. Rather than presenting a single stylistic world, they feel like three different ways of thinking through the same material. The first still partly rooted in classical clarity, but already unsettled by sudden lyrical expansions; the second more expansive and inward at once, with a kind of Nordic intimacy that keeps breaking into broader rhetorical gestures; and the third, in C minor, where everything becomes more compressed and dramatic, as if lyricism and argument are no longer separable, but constantly transforming into one another. Taken together, they don’t behave like a linear evolution so much as three distinct perspectives on how violin and piano can inhabit a shared voice. »

Julian Kainrath says: « I couldn’t be happier to have had the opportunity to record my first album with Josu de Solaun and to have had the chance to explore the incredible music of Grieg. We met almost two years ago, and the desire to collaborate and share musical experiences was there from the very first moment. I am grateful to everyone that makes this things possible. »

The album release is planned for around January 2027.